The US Environmental Protection Agency identified hexavalent chromium as one of 17 “high-priority” toxic chemicals based on their known health and environmental effects, production volume, and potential for work exposure. Typical thick, hard chrome coatings have been produced from a hexavalent chromium bath using a direct current deposition process. One problem associated with this type of coating process is worker exposure to the hexavalent chromium during plating, which is overcome by replacing the carcinogenic material with a benign trivalent chromium plating electrolyte. Through control of the deposition processing a chrome coating with physical properties comparable to chrome coatings obtained using hexavalent chromium has been produced in a scalable manner using the more benign metal.